Considered to be the first American Negro novelist, Chesnutt spent his early years in the North, but following the American Civil War, his parents returned to North Carolina. He became a schoolteacher and principal and married in North Carolina. He and his family moved to Cleveland in 1883, having become disillusioned with the treatment of Negroes in the South. He became an attorney and in his spare time wrote stories in the hope of becoming an author. Beginning in 1885, Chesnutt began publishing his work, mostly tales and short stories, in various periodicals and in 1887 his novel, The Goophered Grapevine was published in the Atlantic Monthly. Most critics, including William Dean Howells, considered Chesnutt a superb writer and often compared him to Turgenev and Maupassant. Other important works by Chesnutt include The Conjure Woman (1899), The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line (1899) and the Colonel's Dream (1905). |
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